Tag: New Year

New Year’s Book Tag

biblionerdreflections14 Comments

Hello, everyone! Today I’m doing the New Year’s Book Tag! Thank you to Dini @ dinipandareads for the tag. This tag was originally created by booktuber Heather @Bookables.

How many books are you planning to read in 2023?

I’ve decided to keep my 2023 Goodreads goal the same as the last couple of years at 100 books. I’ll likely end up reading more than this again, but we’ll see how the year goes.

Name 5 books you didn’t get to this year but want to make a priority in 2023.

Hah! There are way more than five, but here are the ones I’m hoping to read within the next few months. So, they have the highest priority.

  • Chain of Iron by Cassandra Clare
  • The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
  • These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
  • King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
  • The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

What genre do you want to read more of?

Last year I set the goal of reading more non-fiction, and I achieved it. There’s not really a genre that stands out this year to me. Maybe science fiction? Fantasy dominated my reading last year, but I do love sci fi too. Maybe I’ll try to squeeze some more in around all the excellent fantasy coming out this year.

Name 3 non-book-related goals for 2023

  • Get in better shape. In 2021, I was quite active and watched what I was eating and drinking. I lost 30 pounds and improved my endurance and lung capacity quite a bit, which was incredibly helpful since I’ve only got one lung left. Unfortunately, 2022 was a year of backsliding, and I lost all my gains. I’m back to being 30 pounds too heavy again and can barely walk to the mailbox without being out of breath. So, I’m hoping to get back on track this year.
  • Keep my house cleaner. I’m horrible at keeping up with my chores. My home isn’t disgusting, but it could definitely be neater. I’m going to try to keep up with clutter a bit better this year.
  • Take at least one trip. I love traveling, but I’ve mostly avoided doing so since COVID started. I realize that the pandemic still isn’t over, but I’m getting very antsy. I really want to go somewhere new. Maybe a road trip?

What’s a book you’ve had forever that you still need to read?

This definitely has to be The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve had this book for as long as I can remember, and I’ve still never read it. I’d definitely like to give it a try after watching Rings of Power last year. Maybe 2023 will be the year I’m finally brave enough to pick it up. lol.

One word that you’re hoping 2023 will be

I hope 2023 will be HEALTHY. This ties into my goals, but my family and/or I have also had bad luck with our health almost every year since 2019. So, I’m hoping everyone stays healthy this year!

I’m tagging…

Celeste @ A Literary Escape
Sahi @ My World of Books
Anyone else who wants to participate!

2022 – Year In Review

biblionerdreflections12 Comments

Happy New Year! What better way is there to start off the year than looking back on accomplishments from 2022? Last year was a fantastic one for the blog, and I read so many great books. I haven’t decided on my goals for 2023 yet. In usual fashion, I’m a bit late. lol. So, I’ll have another post at some point detailing what I hope to achieve in the coming year. For now, here’s how 2022 shaped up for me.

Reading Stats

When this year started, I planned to track all sorts of stats and had a spreadsheet to track them. I think I gave up on that task by March. LOL. So, all I have to look at this year is the stats provided by Goodreads. For a look at all my reading from 2022, you can check out My Year in Books on Goodreads.

  • Books Read – 201
  • Pages Read – 77,135
  • Shortest Book – The Man and the Crow by Rebecca Crunden (24 pages)
  • Longest Book – Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (1006 pages)
  • Average Book Length – 383 pages
  • Average Rating – 4.2 stars

Progress On My 2022 Reading Goals

Goodreads Challenge

I finished out the year doubling my Goodreads Challenge goal. I set out to read 100 books in 2022. I ended up reading 201 books during the year, which is the most I’ve ever read. It was a really great year.

NetGalley Progress

I wanted to end the year with at least 50 reviews completed for NetGalley and a feedback ratio of at least 80%. I doubled my goal of 50 total NetGalley reviews and brought my number of reviews up to 100. I also achieved my feedback ratio goal and finished off the year at 81%. It has been a really productive year when it comes to ARCs, but I think I’m going to try to slow down on them a bit in 2023. Of course, I’ve already gotten a ton of them… So, we’ll see how that goes.

Read More Nonfiction

My goal for 2022 was to read at least 2 nonfiction books. I ended up reading 5 nonfiction books, which more than surpassed my goal. It was a mix of LGBT, politics, and history, and I enjoyed each of them. I’m going to try to keep reading at least some nonfiction moving forward because I really liked it.

Read More Comics

I set the goal of reading all the comics I buy during the week I buy them. This definitely didn’t happen. LOL. I have giant stacks of comic books I need to read. I’m going to need to think of a more realistic goal for 2023…

#BeatTheBacklog

I tried to focus on having a majority of the books I read in 2022 be books I bought, borrowed, or received prior to January 1, 2022. I’m not going to even bother figuring out the stats for this because I know I didn’t even come close to achieving this one. Most of what I read this year was ARCs of 2022 releases.

Finish Some Series

I planned to finish or catch up on the following 5 series by the end of 2022:

·  The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin

·  Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart

·  The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

·  Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

·  A shit ton of different Shadowhunters books by Cassandra Clare

I did really great with this goal. I finished four out of the five series, and I did read a ton of Shadowhunters books. I only have one more book to go to be caught up. So, I consider that a major success considering how many I had to read at the start of the year.

Blogging Review

I didn’t formally set any blogging goals for this year. However, I was hoping to get at least 300 WordPress followers and break 10,000 views before the end of the year. I accomplished both of those tasks and consider 2022 to be a very successful year. I’ve also made so many new blogging friends this year, which I didn’t expect. Now I can honestly say that you all are the reason I’m still blogging because you make it so much fun. Thank you to everyone who visited the blog, liked a post, or commented their thoughts. I’ve loved interacting with you all even more this past year and am looking forward to seeing what we all get up to in 2023.

This year I’ve started getting much more traffic from search engines. These five posts have done particularly well at bringing in views from search results, especially Google. I’m honestly not sure why, but I’m glad that at least some of my reviews are getting a slightly wider audience. Here are my top five posts of the year:

  1. ARC Review – Heart of the Sun Warrior
  2. ARC Review – Babel
  3. Most Anticipated November 2022 Releases
  4. Book Review – Of Blood and Fire
  5. ARC Review – The Stardust Thief

I’ve limited this list to posts published in 2022 because I had a ton of posts from 2021 that received a random view here and there. Much of this list is posts from the last couple of weeks, which makes sense because they haven’t had the time to get as many views as most of my other 2022 posts. There are a couple of meme posts too that did particularly poorly for whatever reason. Here are my five least viewed posts of the year:

  1. WWW Wednesday (3) – May 25, 2022
  2. ALC Review – Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell
  3. My Ranking of the 2022 Star Wars Books
  4. First Lines Fridays (51) – June 3, 2022
  5. Book Review – Path of Deceit

Final Thoughts

I hope you all have a great holiday, and I wish everyone the best for the new year. I’m excited about what is to come in the new year, and I’m looking forward to continuing to share my thoughts about great books with you all in the year to come!